Fragile earth

Quotes

The non-violent state will be an ordered anarchy. That State is the best governed which is governed the least.

Mohandas Ghandi

In no longer pretty citiesThere are warrants, forms and chittiesThere are fingers in the kittiesAnd a jackboot on the stair.

V for Vendetta

Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

Thomas Jefferson

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Benjamin Franklin

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

John Stuart Mills

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

Never give your government any power that you wouldn't also be comfortable entrusting to a genocidal dictator.

The Angry Exile

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

C.S. Lewis

America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.

Claire Wolfe

The powers delegated to the government must be precisely defined … and clearly be of such extent as that, by no reasonable construction, they can be made to invade the rights and prerogatives intended to be left in the people.

Richard Henry Lee

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

James Madison

A charity that relies in the main part on taxes is no more a charity than a prostitute is your girlfriend.

Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.

John Adams

Government’s view of the economy can be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidise it.

Ronald Reagan

It's amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral self-righteous bullying laziness ... There is great joy in helping people, but no joy in doing it at gunpoint.

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? [...] We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Angry Places

Saturday, 2 January 2010

The Met Office forecast for the coming winter suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average. It is also likely that the coming winter will be drier than last year.

Sorry, what the fuck did you mean 'again'? Last winter was fucking freezing! Or did we all imagine all that snow and that plane sliding off the taxiway at Heathrow? And the winter before got pretty cold, as did 2005 if my recollection of freezing my bollocks off is accurate. Christ, if you can't even get what has happened right it doesn't bode well for predictions, which goes some way to explaining this (my emphasis):

Britain is bracing itself for one of the coldest winters for a century with temperatures hitting minus 16 degrees Celsius, forecasters have warned.They predicted no let up in the freezing snap until at least mid-January, with snow, ice and severe frosts dominating.And the likelihood is that the second half of the month will be even colder.Weather patterns were more like those in the late 1970s, experts said, while Met Office figures released on Monday are expected to show that the country is experiencing the coldest winter for up to 25 years.

Add to that the repeated predictions for dry, scorching summers that end up being chilly washouts, especially last year's infamous 'barbecue summer' foot in mouth PR. Never mind, fellas, it's like flipping a coin and only ever calling heads. If you keep saying that same 'hotter', milder', 'drier', 'warming' stuff eventually you'll be right eventually.

Thank you for choosing the warble gloaming obsessed Met Orifice for all your weather forecasting needs. Sorry, no refunds.